What are the mains things to know when you are planning strategy of digital marketing internationally? I read about traveling and digital marketing, and how to optimize it as desired way.
Article of Visit Finland drew my attention, because it was from familiar and significant source. The research of the article was implemented with ORC international. The goal was find trends in digital marketing and develop region-specific digital marketing recommendations for Visit Finland across 9 countries. Above all, recommendations can help travel companies grow their business. Countries of the research were United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea. (Visit Finland, ORC International, 4-7, 2017.)
I got a lot of information and statistics about major tourist countries. Moreover where and how people reserve their travel and get inspiration for it. These are important things to consider with digital travel marketing.
The article had wide research of each country and great profile of them. The most significant channels were big worldwide channels like Tripadvisor, Expedia and Airbnb. Secondly country specific airlines and travel companies.
I think one of the most important things to know is which digital travel channels countries are using to book a trip or find information. When you know this, you can target and optimize your marketing. To find these channels, there were four key elements: technology, customers, region and leading digital platforms.
8 emerging mega trends in tourism
Besides the digital channels, major topic in my opinion in the article was about emerging trends and how they affect in the tourism industry. Trends are also important thing to look at in marketing. These are the main things to sum up.
- Increased travel market growth: the global travel sector is expected to expand.
- Airlines pushing boundaries: airlines are showing new focus on online distribution and digital retailing
- Shared economy: Private accommodations like Airbnb are even more popular, and are raising travelers expectations and posing new challenges.
- Changing sales funnel enters mainstream: barriers between these segments are breaking down. Booking companies are acquiring search companies, while search companies are launching bookings.
- China is driving smartphone growth: China has the biggest growth opportunities, and it is being driven by consumer comfort with smartphone purchasing.
- Hotels face more pressure: It is becoming harder for them to maintain direct distribution with the growth of OTAs and metasearch sites. It is more difficult to counter competition from private accommodation like HomeAway and Airbnb.
- Growth of mobile & chat: Mobile will continue to increase in popularity for travelers, but desktop booking still dominates as the main digital mode of travel research and purchasing.
- ‘In-destination’ innovation: travelers are looking to book travel activities online through mobile devices while in destination. (Visit Finland, ORC International, 12-20, 2017.)
Marketing case studies
One objective of the research was create case studies and examples. I think this was the most interesting topic. There was great examples how different companies have made inventive marketing plans. In the case studies, background, problem, solution and results were explained.
I think these were good examples of innovation and tourism marketing. Examples were about countries, cities and companies. For instance, one innovation was by Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook gave customers a ‘try before you fly’ kind of experience by using VR- technology. It allowed customers to get a taste of a different destination without actually travelling there. I think this was great way of marketing in digitized world.
My Learning
The article was quite large and had a lot of information. I learned more about digital marketing and how to optimize it for specific countries. Different digital channels in different countries were new information. The research of mega trends was interesting, because trends can affect many ways in the tourism industry. Moreover i also learned how innovative marketing can be.
References
Visit Finland. ORC International. 2017. Optimizing digital channels for marketing and promotions in the travel industry. Viitattu 26.1.2022.